Pull up the drawbridges

Here is a political conspiracy to contemplate over Easter.
Julia Gillard
is not having a good time as Prime Minister. Voters are turning off, not warming to her. The carbon debate is going nowhere. The government is getting bogged down in more and more issues.

Labor is quietly panicking and desperately looking for (another) leadership solution to its problems. Particularly active is the Australian Workers Union, whose members are increasingly anxious about the prospect of losing their jobs in trade-exposed industries such as steel production under a carbon price regime, and who see themselves as major powerbrokers in labour movement affairs.

AWU national secretary
Paul Howes
emerges to declare the union will not support the government if jobs are to be lost under the proposed carbon pricing scheme.

AWU national president
Bill Ludwig
emerges to attack former PM Kevin Rudd. Meantime, Gillard ramps up an attack on dole bludgers and people who otherwise don’t or won’t work.

Perplexed MPs are agog that their Prime Minister would attack a part of the party’s own electoral base that is unlikely to win any compensating support from Coalition voters.

Some close Labor observers suggest Gillard has been put up to her attack on welfare recipients because it will push the party’s primary vote so low that her continuation in the job becomes untenable.

Whom to turn to? Well, the argument goes, only one possible contender: the AWU’s own favoured son and most senior representative, the Deputy Prime Minister and Treasurer
Wayne Swan
.

This is the conspiracy theory. And on the face of it, there seems to be some evidence of all the factors on which it is built.

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It certainly reflects the change in sentiment within the Labor Party over the past few weeks. This change is from a position in which Gillard’s colleagues were locked in behind their leader, firm in the belief that they had no choice but to stick with her whatever happened and that they just had to get used to the­ tough side of politics.

This was based on the pragmatic view that they didn’t believe voters would tolerate another leadership change; that the independent MPs would not tolerate such a change; and that Gillard could pull the government out of its malaise.

As more bad polls have emerged and the government has found itself under more pressure, the view has shifted.

Some colleagues now speak of Gillard as being in an irredeemable position with voters. They still don’t really believe they can change leaders but are frantically searching for a way out of the dilemma, a search that has thrown up the names of both Swan and Defence Minister
Stephen Smith
. (They cannot contemplate a return to Rudd.)

The problems with the neat AWU conspiracy are that the welfare to work/tough love message Gillard has chosen as the centrepiece of the budget next month is all her own work – built on areas that go to her core policy interests.

Swan’s interest is holding on to his job. And the AWU, much as it might dislike
Rudd
, still sees a difference between fighting the carbon price and tearing down (another) prime minister.